Among the international soccer talent that much of the planet is obsessively following with each dribble, pass, and shot of the World Cup stands a 5’7″ Argentine who many consider the best player of his generation, if not of all-time.

Here are three traits that make Lionel Messi superb, and that the best nonprofits share with him.
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So, I sign your online petition, I am then almost twice as likely as someone who didn’t sign that petition to give money to a cause that is similar to yours.

Notice that didn’t read “give money to your organization”. Mark that. It’ll be on the quiz later.
The researchers also found that I’m more likely to take other actions in support of similar causes after signing your petition, provided those actions don’t cost me much.

Nothing is perfect but it is possible to use our inevitable failures to inspire innovation, and build the collaborative learning practices needed to become more competitive, effective and resilient organizations.

Let’s face it. We screw up. We make mistakes. We miss the target, or realize after scoring a direct hit that we were aiming at the wrong target all along.

We fail.

This is all the more true when we have lofty goals which are chock full of difficult targets to hit. And nonprofits are nothing if not organizations with lofty goals. They are looking to foster the social good by curing ugly, intractable problems that don’t have easy answers or tried-and-true remedies.

Nonprofits need to fail. It’s often within failure that true innovation happens.
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I had no idea it was National Volunteer week until Bethany at NTEN wrote this little blog post thanking all the chapter coordinators for their help in running NTEN events over the years. While I guess I do technically volunteer as the DC NTEN Chapter coordinator, I rarely think of it as volunteering. Rather, I think of it as community building of accidental techies who are trying to do good in this mad, crazy world. And since I love meeting new people and organizing events, my NTEN happy hours aren’t something I begrudge, but instead something to which I look forward.

That being said, I hope you can join me for our next DC NTEN Happy Hour to be held on Wednesday, April 23 at Local 16. Let’s hope for nice weather as we’ll be upstairs on their outdoor patio. For more info and to RSVP, be sure to visit the event page. Hope to see you there!

With Soapbox Engage integrating our website with Salesforce, the efficiency gains we achieve with online donations, event management, and our self-service member portal far surpass the hours lost with me…uh, I mean, members of our team…distracted by the NCAA tournament.

Interested in how your nonprofit can become more efficient and effective by integrating your website with Salesforce? Contact us!

We’re proud to co-sponsor this year’s 10-year anniversary of Penguin Day – and we’d love for you to come and join the fun and knowledge sharing!

What is Penguin Day? Penguin Days are designed to let nonprofits and social justice activists learn about free and open source software (FOSS) that can support their work and potentially save them money, including tools for web publishing, fundraising, blogging, and campaigning. Facilitated by the irrepressible Allen “Gunner” Gunn, it’s always a heck of a ride, chock-full of knowledge and valuable connections.

I have been asked, when talking about how our support ticket management strategy is set up, what sort of tier structure we use.

For those of you who don’t know, ticket management usually has some sort of “tiering structure” where a ticket starts at Tier 1, and then may get escalated to Tier 2, Tier 3 and so on, depending on how complex the issue is. Three or four tiers are typical – but I’ve heard of structures as large as ten tiers.
If a ticket comes in, and the Tier 1 agent isn’t able to address it, she will escalate it to Tier 2, and so on. Read more »

With its latest release this weekend, Soapbox Mailer takes mass email integration with Salesforce.com to a whole new level, allowing you to merge data from any standard or custom field on any of the following objects: Read more »

To effectively raise money and build an engaged group of supporters, your organization needs more than just a donate page on its website. You need strategies and tools that move people from casual visitor to recurring donor and dedicated supporter – all while minimizing overhead.

Online petitions are an effective tool to capture the casual visitor and active donor alike, and move them down the engagement path – even if yours isn’t an advocacy organization.

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About Us

We're a group of passionate technologists (and a penguin) focused on delivering ridiculously awesome online engagement solutions for organizations through Soapbox Engage, Non-Profit Soapbox, and Soapbox Mailer. We enjoy long walks on the beach, burritos by candlelight, and taking work seriously, but not ourselves seriously.